A 360° panorama of the southern night sky, showing the Milky Way all the way across the sky with the centre of the Galaxy directly overhead. The Dark Emu extends from the Coal Sack at upper left to the dark lanes in Scutum at lower right. Venus is rising at right amid the zodical light and some cloud. Mars, at opposition, is just setting behind the trees at lower left. I shot this at 4:30 a.m. April 11, 2014 from the Two Styx Cabins just outside the boundary of New England National Park, NSW, Australia. This is a stitched panorama composed of 6 segments, each taken with an 8mm fish-eye lens on the Canon 5D Mark II. Each segment is a 1-minute untracked exposure at f/3.5 and ISO 4000. So the stars are trailed and with this projection also distorted at the side edges of the frame.
A 360° panorama captures the arch of the Milky Way on a June night, over Two Jack Lake, near Banff, Alberta. Mount Rundle is at centre, and Cascade Mountain behind the trees at right. Mars (brightest) and Saturn shine above Mt Rundle. Lights from campers on the lakeshore are at left while light pollution from Banff and Calgary light the scattered clouds. The Milky Way stretches from Perseus at far left in the northeast to Sagittarius at centre in the south. The northern sky at far left and right is blue with lingering summer twilight that lights the northern sky all night near summer solstice. This is a stitch of 28 segments in 4 tiers of 7 segments each with the iPano motorized panning unit. Each was 20 seconds at f/2.8 with the Sigma 24mm lens and Nikon D750 at ISO 5000. The scene can be cropped off at right to frame just the lake and Milky Way.
A 360° panorama and more than 100° from the ground to the zenith, taken at the Riverwalk picnic area in Grasslands National Park, Saskatchewan, August 25, 2014. Sagittarius is at left, where the Milky Way is setting, while Perseus, Auriga and the Pleiades are at right where the Milky Way is rising. The green bands are from airglow not aurora. I used the 14mm Rokinon lens in portrait mode for a set of 8 segments, each 60 seconds at ISO 4000 and f/2.8 wih the Canon 6D. The tipi is a modern store-bought tipi not an authentic family-owned First Nations tipi.
